Nothing Gold Can Stay
by myhomeistheshire
Summary: Cassandra's finally found a family. She doesn't know how she's going to be able to leave them. She wishes she could tell Jake how she feels, before everything is over.


Cassandra knows that she's dying.

Of course she does. She remembers in vivid detail the day that the doctor had sat her down, looking calm and collected, but with a hint of pity that let her know what was coming. Ever since then, each day has been _one day closer_.

She wonders about death a lot. She wonders about what comes after - if there is an after. She's never been strictly religious, but she's always liked the idea of someone up there, taking care of her.

The day she enters the library is simultaneously the best and worst day of her life. Because on one hand, _magic is real_, and she can see all the adventures spinning out in front of her, over and over, like a gold and glittering daydream, except this time it's real.

Until, of course, she remembers it isn't. Not for her, anyways. Not for long.

She should never have told let the Serpent Brotherhood in - she knows that, with a terrible sinking feeling in her gut as soon as the guards take their first menacing step toward Flynn. Her entire world is spinning - it always is a little, with her hallucinations, but this time it's different. She doesn't think she can come back from this.

And then the impossible happens - _they forgive her_. And Flynn is alive, and for the first time in_ her entire life_, Cassandra has a family. People who actually care about her, instead of the random foster parents who kept her only as long as they felt like it, who shoved her around and treated her like a meal ticket.

Except Jake.

When she first meets Jake, he's all harshness and hard edges and _you've already betrayed us once_. But something about him makes her feel like she's falling, off-kilter. Like she's standing on the tip of the world and deciding whether or not to jump. She thinks he might be the Dallas to her Cherry, but she knows how that ended so she tries her best to keep her distance.

She doesn't realize how much it isn't working until after the labyrinth, until he's looking at her with that soft smile and the crinkling up around his eyes, until he tells her _I learned my lesson._

She cries herself to sleep that night.

* * *

They're kind of like a family, Cassandra thinks. A weird, chaotic, magic-fighting family. But the fact is that regardless of how strange it is, this is possibly the best thing that has ever happened to her. Even with Jake.

But that doesn't mean she's stopped counting in _one day closer_'s. Now, it just feels like she needs to make the most of everything, before it's over.

She sees the others looking at her, sometimes, when the headaches and hallucinations get to be too much and she collapses. But it isn't pity so much as fear, and that simple fact is enough to make her tear up when she sees it on their faces.

She never sees it on Jake's face, though. She doesn't see much of anything on his face anymore.

She tries not to think about it, as much as possible - any of it. Because if she thinks of having to leave all of them, she doesn't think she'll be able to make it. Not through a single day. But it's hard to avoid. Every time she sees a new magical artifact, she thinks _this could be the one that saves me_. Every time Baird barks a command, or Zeke makes a sarcastic comment, or Flynn puts aside his 10-year-old act to actually talk to them, she thinks _I don't think I could ever love anyone more._ She also thinks_ I don't know how I'm going to be able to leave them._

It's hard, being near Jake but knowing that he's always second-guessing her. She can almost forget, sometimes, when he's laughing at something she said and he's throwing his head back and she feels a little like she's drowning. Or when he finds her sitting, staring into the fireplace with shaking hands, and she tells him _I don't think I can live like this anymore._ He holds her as she cries into his shoulder, and for just a moment she lets herself hope.

* * *

Turns out, his goodbye comes a little sooner than she'd expected.

They're following the trail of a magical spear, and since it seems like an easy find, Baird and Zeke go one way while Jake and Cassandra go another. She doesn't say anything. It's easier to pretend it doesn't matter, that he won't look at her or say more than a few words to her. It's easier if she pretends to herself, too.

And then suddenly there's a monster, jumping out of the woods with a cry, and Cassandra wasn't paying attention and it's coming straight at her and even though she could solve 17 math equations in this amount of time she somehow can't move her legs and she knew she was going to die but she didn't think it would be this _soon_ -

\- And then she's being shoved to the side, skin scraping across pavement, and she looks up just in time to see the thing connecting with Jake, dragging its claws across his stomach. Roaring, loudly. And then running off.

She pushes herself to her knees and pulls herself over to Jake. He's bleeding all over the pavement and she didn't _know_ that one person could hold this much blood, and a terrible image of Dallas Winston holding his heater up underneath the lamplight hits her.

"You shouldn't have done that." She's crying, her hands skimming over his chest like they could heal him by themselves. "I'm going to die anyways, Jake, _I'm going to die anyways -_"

"It wasn't your choice to make." Jake's voice is coming in gasps, but he lifts a hand up to brush her hair. "Cassie, this - wasn't your - fault."

"But _why?"_ Cassandra sobs, still trying to press down on the wounds to stop the bleeding. "I betrayed you, but you still saved me. Why?"

Jake laughs, but it's bitter. He meets her gaze, and the look in his eyes is calm. "You know why." He says, and then a sudden spasm rocks his body, and his eyes suddenly become unseeing.

"No. No, no, _no."_ Cassandra is sobbing out, but she already knows he isn't breathing. She tries CPR, but even as she's thrusting her fists into his chest, she knows it's no use. _"Jake._ Jake, _please,_ please don't leave me -"

Baird and Zeke find her there, an eternity later.

She hears their shouts like they're a million miles away, and she's still pumping Jake's chest, up and down, up and down, up and down -

"Cassandra. Cassandra, he's gone."

"No. _No."_

He died gallant, she thinks, as someone drags her away from him. Just like Dally. He died gallant.

She's not sure if she'll be able to do the same. She hopes so.

And for some reason, in the midst of the screaming and sobbing and feeling like her heart is going to shatter into a million pieces, a single line of that poem comes to her.

_Nothing gold can stay._

She hopes she'll see him, after.

* * *

_Nature's first green is gold,_

_Her hardest hue to hold._

_Her early leaf's a flower;_

_But only so an hour._

_Then leaf subsides to leaf._

_So Eden sank to grief,_

_So dawn goes down to day._

_Nothing gold can stay._


End file.
